Court: Sherri Shepherd Can't Get Out of Surrogacy Contract

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Sherri Shepherd arrives at the Samsung Hope for Children Gala 2014 on June 10, 2014, in New York. On Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2015, a court ruled that Shepherd could not void a surrogacy contract she entered with her ex-husband.

Television personality and actress Sherri Shepherd has been found legally responsible for a child born to a surrogate she and her ex-husband hired before they divorced, a Pennsylvania appeals court ruled this week in upholding the surrogacy contract.

Shepherd had fought to have the contract voided. The ruling means she must continue paying $4,100 a month in child support, according to a lawyer for ex-husband Lamar Sally, who is raising the 1-year-old boy in Los Angeles.

The initial birth certificate listed the surrogate as the mother, prompting California authorities to seek support from her when Sally settled there, according to his lawyer, Tiffany Palmer. Sally is a writer and substitute teacher.

The owner of the surrogacy agency they used praised the decision, which makes Shepherd the legal mother listed on the birth certificate.

"Surrogates don't want to feel that someone could want a baby and then just back out. The surrogate is not the mother," said Melissa B. Brisman, who owns Reproductive Possibilities LLC in Montvale, N.J.

Pennsylvania courts had never ruled on the validity of surrogacy contracts, which some states have refused to uphold, Palmer said.

"(Shepherd) does not dispute that she freely entered into the gestational carrier contract," the Superior Court ruling said. "Baby S. would not have been born but for (her) actions and express agreement to be the child's legal mother."